Kimi Raikkonen insists he is not overly concerned by the repeated gearbox problems Lotus has suffered during pre-season testing.

After falling ill on Saturday, Raikkonen returned to the cockpit of the Lotus on Sunday but lost several hours of running in the morning due to a gearbox issue. The same problem limited his first day in the car at last week's Barcelona test, but the team believes it will have a solution by Australia.

"The thing that has cost us many hours has been the same thing," Raikkonen said. "We don't really expect it to happen when it's warmer. Of course when you have the problems you can never be 100% sure that it's not going to happen again, but last year we had some problems in testing but we were very good in the racing so hopefully it'll be the same again."

Technical director James Allison said Lotus had a fix planned for the first race.

"Today's gearbox problem was the same as we experienced previously but we're confident we have a solution and are not concerned about it causing us any issues in Melbourne," he said. "We were able to confirm some aspects of the Melbourne aero package this afternoon and have some more new parts to be run in Australia. Overall we would have been happy with far more pre-season running, but we have not had any difficulties getting a good lap time out of the car without resorting to low fuel runs at any of the tests."

The International Rugby Board (IRB) have stripped Australia of the right to host a round of the World Sevens Series, scheduled for Brisbane on 16-17 February, after the Australian government's refusal to provide visas for the squad from Fiji